Multibody systems with unilateral constraints

A brief survey of theoretical and practical applications of the complementarity principle in multibody systems with many multiple unilateral contacts is presented. Considered in a straightforward manner such systems involve a combinatorial problem of many dimensions, which can only be solved reasonably by the introduction of the complementarity idea. This states that for unilateral contacts either the relative kinematics are zero and the corresponding constraint forces are non-zero, or vice versa. Relations between the complementarity problem and linear programming problems are discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.